Comments on: The spark of epiphanies: Q&A with John Kounioshttp://blog.ted.com/the-spark-of-epiphanies-qa-with-john-kounios/
The TED Blog shares interesting news about TED, TED Talks video, the TED Prize and more.Sun, 02 Aug 2015 15:44:25 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.com/By: Breakfast in Bed | Paytington & Co.http://blog.ted.com/the-spark-of-epiphanies-qa-with-john-kounios/comment-page-1/#comment-54354
Sat, 12 Apr 2014 14:46:27 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=60535#comment-54354[…] Food for thought: an extremely interesting TED Talks on epiphanies. […]
]]>By: Aimee Hhttp://blog.ted.com/the-spark-of-epiphanies-qa-with-john-kounios/comment-page-1/#comment-51348
Tue, 25 Feb 2014 18:11:59 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=60535#comment-51348I like that you commented on the aspect from the grant providers perspective. It is unfortunate sometimes that the human researchers position must succumb to the mathematically or logical locked rules we have taught our children for generations now. What has knowledge become? A race on a one way path that upholds and prizes reason and step by step processes, as you mentioned above. I believe however that we are in progression towards a better recognition of knowledge without emperical evidence, though a very distant future.
]]>By: Hans Eisenmanhttp://blog.ted.com/the-spark-of-epiphanies-qa-with-john-kounios/comment-page-1/#comment-51343
Tue, 25 Feb 2014 16:18:08 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=60535#comment-51343What if all this activity that neuroscientists study in the brain is only half the picture?

E.g.: what if the brain were like a car’s electrical system.

We are all excited about the headlights, internal lights, radio, windshield wipers and and so on of the car turning on and off; and we’re studying that activity and writing papers about it all the time.

The papers describe in great detail how different environments seem to cause the lights to come on (darkness), or when the car goes on longer trips, the radio comes on. Elaborate descriptions about all the interaction between the car and the environment.

You could just spend a whole lifetime studying this and writing really official sounding, descriptive papers about how when this environmental thing happens around the car, the car responds by turning on it’s lights.

“Fascinating!”, the people would say.

A whole career could be created around the study of just that zone of observations.

But no one ever asked this other question: hey, is there some thing in command of this car? Some point of causation behind all of this mechanical stuff that’s making it happen and we’re just studying the effects of that causative element?

Of course, in a car, it’s the human being acting as driver.

Couldn’t that also be true for the human body? Couldn’t all these neuron synapses and “brain activity” be the end of the line?

Doesn’t it seem likely that there is something driving all this like a human spirit?

I mean, just because we can’t see it in the same way you can see a driver in a car, does that mean it absolutely “doesn’t exist”?

If you go East a bit, it’s pretty easy to run into a complete cultural certainty that there is a human spirit and that it’s not all just wiring and electricity–that the body is just a vessel, essentially, not entirely unlike the vessel we call cars.

IMHO, that seems a lot more plausible to me than the idea that a human body is running around solving complex problems using a few pounds of grey jelly.